HISTORYAT A GLANCE |
Consolidation of the Revolution(Part 3.)
history of Iran from the period of the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1907 to
the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Ruhollah K. Ramazani's The Foreign Policy of
Iran, 1500-1941 is factual and comprehensive on foreign policy issues for the
period from 1800 to the abdication of Reza Shah. On nineteenth-century economic
history, Charles Issawi's The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914, a collection
of documents with extensive commentary, is still unsurpassed.
For the period of Reza Shah, A History of Modern Iran by Joseph M. Upton is
concise and incisive. Modern Iran by L.P. Elwell-Sutton, although written in the
1940s, is still a useful study; and Amin Banani's The Modernization of Iran,
1921-1941, covering the same period and along the same lines, looks less at
political The United States-Iranian relationship in the period 1941-80 is the focus of
Barry Rubin's Paved with Good Intentions. The United States-Iranian relationship
in the period following the Islamic Revolution is covered in Gary Sick's All
Fall Down. The foreign policy of the Islamic Republic is covered in Ramazani's
Revolutionary Iran. Reign of the Ayatollahs by Shaul Bakhash is a political
history of the Islamic Revolution up to 1986. The State and Revolution in Iran,
1962-1982 by Hossein Bashiriyeh is an interpretative essay on the Revolution and
its background. Roy P. Mottahedeh's The Mantle of the Prophet is at once a
biography of a modern-day Iranian cleric, a study of religious education in
Iran, and an intriguing interpretation of Iran's cultural history.
developments under Reza Shah than at the changes introduced in
such areas as industry, education, legal structure, and women's emancipation.
Donald Wilber's Riza
Shah Pahlavi, 1878-1944 is basically a factual but not
strongly interpretative biography of the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty. J.
Bharier's Economic Development in Iran, 1900-1970, as the name suggests,
provides an economic history of the late Qajar and much of the Pahlavi period.
For the period of Mohammad Reza Shah, in addition to books by Abrahamian and
Keddie (cited above), Iran: The Politics of Groups, Classes, and Modernization
by James A. Bill and The Political Elite of Iran by Marvin Zonis are both
studies of elite politics and elite structure. Fred Halliday's Iran:
Dictatorship and Development is a critical account of the nature of the state
and the shah's rule, and Robert Graham's Iran: The Illusion of Power casts an
equally critical eye on the last years of the shah's reign. More sympathetic
assessments can be found in George Lenczowski's Iran under the Pahlavis.
Relations between the state and the religious establishment for the whole of the
Pahlavi period are covered in Shahrough Akhavi's Religion and Politics in
Contemporary Iran. Iran's foreign policy is surveyed in Ramazani's Iran's
Foreign Policy, 1941-1973.
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